Sunday, March 18, 2012

BattleTech: Graduation Was Ruined

Jason looks appropriately outraged.

I promise you that my updates have not permanently regressed to a weekly thing. Unfortunately, my triumphant return to blogging was not accompanied by an equally triumphant cleansing of my task list, and the last couple weeks have been a bit overwhelming.

One of the many combat missions at the beginning of the game.

BattleTech has grown on me a bit, even though there's a host of things about it that I don't understand--and even though I seem to suck at it. It took me forever to get out of the training academy. I managed to screw up each mission at least twice, and a couple of them took me six or seven re-tries. But it wasn't so bad because I had time to mess around, make money, develop my skills, and figure out the game mechanics. A few notes:

I found that I could talk to my fellow students if I saw them walking to a building ahead of me. Then they'd be there when I looked around. Otherwise, it said, "nobody here seems interested in talking to you." They didn't really have much to say anyway.

I enjoyed the stock market investments a lot. I wish this was a feature of more games. I made so much money that it felt like cheating a bit; eventually, I was able to purchase all the training the game would let me buy, and whatever weapons I wanted.

I may never live up to my father's reputation as a MechWarrior, but I'll at least be richer than him.

I never did figure out the rules of when I got paid. As I wandered around, I'd see my money go up in $15 increments, but it seemed to be completely random. Sometimes, an hour would go by with no money. Other times, I'd go out to the kitchen to whip up some pasta, come back to my computer, and find myself with over $150.

The game has tiresome copy protection that has you naming mech parts before every training mission.

I'll save a combat tactics posting for when I understand it more, but it seems very tactical. The way you maneuver and use the terrain recalls Pool of Radiance even if the weapons and graphics are more reminiscent of Wasteland. You have the option to have little graphics show up for key combat events. I like the way Jason gets enraged and bangs on the console every time the mech overheats.

When you engage in combat, you have the option to fight yourself or have the computer fight for you. Either way, you have the option to see graphics or not, and different levels of text from "verbose" to "none." If you set control to the computer, say no to graphics, and no to text, you still have to wait as the computer does all the calculations behind the scenes and ultimately tells you the results.

Manual combat against another mech. I like to walk right up and kick them. That might explain my gunnery score problem.

From my repeated missions, my piloting skill reached "excellent" very quickly, but nothing I could do would get my gunnery skill off anything but "unskilled" until the final mission, when I finally made it to "amateur."

I continue to enjoy the scripted dialogue in the game from shopkeepers and mechanics.

I won't think of not buying it after that.

As I said, most of the training messages left my mech destroyed and had my little icon limping sheepishly back to the training center. Once I finally beat the fifth scenario, a fellow cadet named Rick Atlas asked to see me in the lounge. While we were talking, a drunk tech spilled a drink on me and Atlas stopped me from giving him a good thrashing (which was probably a good thing, the way the game has been going; I likely would have just embarrassed myself). The little scene ended with Atlas asking if I'd ever been to Starport and giving me some kind of electronic device when I said no. I think this came in handy later.

But I have been to the Tosche Station to pick up power converters.

The training missions started pitting me against multiple mechs, and on the seventh mission, I got an ominous message that the training opponents were "like nothing you've ever faced before." It soon became clear that they weren't training; the academy had been invaded by the enemy. As I tried to battle the mechs, I got an increasingly alarming series of messages that the citadel and its army were destroyed and my father probably killed.

I'm basically a complete coward.

The enemy mechs destroyed mine, leaving me to flee on foot. Sure enough, the training academy was in ruins.

My money was in there!

I was soon slain by a group of 5 humans who laughed off my pathetic attacks with a sword.

This is the "death" message.

Reloading, I decided to use my funds to stock up on a variety of weapons and armor. Little did I realize that I was completely wasting money and every time I made a purchase, it just replaced my old weapon or armor with the new one. Without meaning to, I ended up wearing a flak suit and wielding a short-range missile launcher as my weapon. When I reloaded and went through the invasion again, my short-range missile launcher proved quite effective against the enemies on foot (I haven't tried to battle mechs on foot yet), which makes me wonder why anyone would bother with a sword or pistol or lesser weapons.

Oddly, it doesn't seem to run out of ammunition.

The game suggested that I flee to Starport. I had no idea where it was, so I staked out in a random direction, but soon I noticed that the overland map had an arrow on it pointing me the way; I assume this is a consequence of Atlas's electronic device.

I encountered legions of enemies along the way, and by the time I reached Starport, I had virtually no health left. As I close the game for the night, I've just discovered that Starport is no safe haven, and enemies roam the streets, still looking for blood.

Notice my "body" or health meter at its minimum.

I really do like the combat in this game, even if I suspect I'll be letting the computer fight a lot of it. What I don't understand is how I got to "excellent" so fast in so many skills. It doesn't seem there would be a lot more categories to go ("stupendous"?), and the game's just beginning.

While you were all waiting for this posting, you had the dorkiest discussion ever on the thread to the last posting, but it got a little out of hand. I confess that I fall on the side of mecha skeptics: I don't see how they'd ever be efficient or effective combat vehicles. But I'm not personally invested in the opinion. And since they're clearly important to this game, I hope there's some way I can acquire one in Starport.

39 comments:

"While you were all waiting for this posting, you had the dorkiest discussion ever on the thread to the last posting, but it got a little out of hand." - Absolutely amazing thing to say, considering the topic of the blog. hahahahaha

This comment made me recall a comment I made on the Codex:Fighting man to man is rather boring, I think. Even with a machine gun it takes too long to mow down punks with bows and knifes, and zig zag movement doesn't seems to prevent them from hitting you with bows and pistols. So the tactic invented by the legendary 20th century hero back at Earth - Sledge Hammer - is the best tactic. Just stand still and blow them away with your rocket launcher.

BTW, don't forget that Jason is wearing a uniform which may attract unwanted attention at Starport.

Since I made this posting, I've now won the game, and I agree with you. The combat has a promising mechanic, but the frequency of random encounters was a bit much. More important, the combat really didn't amount to anything and was in fact completely absent from the last third of the game. Also, I never had to fight on foot again except for a few random battles in Starport.

Oh, forgot to mention, but it is possible to escape the Academy with your mech, since the fences are down when the Kuritans attack.It makes it a lot easier to reach Starport, since only other mechs and humans with rocket launchers can harm you. Which brings me to something that annoyed me. Why does the game even throw groups of humans without possibility of harming a mech against you? And why does the computer waste all that ammo on them on auto-combat when it can just step on them?

The game has good writing and good premise, but is let down by some questionable design decisions. And some parts of the game feels more like an Adventure game than a CRPG. And I mean that as a pejorative. ;-)

I don't know if you read much of the comments on the last thread, but this game is based on a tabletop wargame, where you would spend hours moving minature mechs around on a table done up with trees, rivers, etc. Often filled with sand so you could sculpt it into different terrain. As a result, I'm not surprised combat is better then most games; it is descended from a war game directly, instead of vaguely descended from D&D (Which had a terrible combat system until 2000)

I seem to remember favouring the flamethrower, myself. If you were facing a mech on foot, good luck hitting it enough times with the rocket launcher to kill it before you were crushed or smashed or exploded. On the other hand, you could overheat it and then leg it if you had the flamethrower.

I loved this game when I was a kid. Must've played through a dozen times. It was my gateway drug into the rest of battletech.

The graduation fight is tough, but you can win it if you're lucky and carefull. Get the Chameleon and fire at them as you run away. Your large laser is longer ranged than their mediums and a few lucky hits can reduce the odds. Jenners are fast with a lot of medium range firepower, but tend to overheat. If you get far enough from them you can flee the combat.

Well it was a short game if you already beat it, but the years on the other hand are getting longer and longer, I didn't realize there were that many games. I remember when I was a kid and I was choosing a game to buy, and I didn't buy Super Mario Bros 3, because I wanted to "save it for later, in case they wont make any more games". For a Zelda and Mario fan such as me there was a shortage of games, but if you're playing every rpg ever released, then there's no shortage it seems. There's a lot of games on your list, and that's bad because I'm kinda hopping you'd get to the good ones soon, where graphics and sound are awesome, but if the games are going to become shorter and shorter that might still work out. I think it took far longer to finish Pool of Radiance than this. I recently watched a let's play of Pool of Radiance on youtube, just to see how you're supposed to beat it, and the guy was cheating by modifying his characters to maximum stats!

Maybe when you rate the games you might mention the number of hours required to finish the game and how hard it is, that way I would know if a particular game is harder or easier than Pool of Radiance for instance (since it's the only game on this blog that I've played myself). I think games are going to get easier year by year.

My spreadsheet actually lists the number of hours it took me, but you raise a good point: perhaps I should include a "difficulty" rating along with my GIMLET. And I should mention the hours in the final rating posting. Thanks for the suggestion.

There are only a few ways to get a mech. And none of them will be as good as your poor lost Chameleon(I think the only mech in the game with a large laser and very long range, unfortunately your gunnery skill won't make you very accurate). Being highly outnumbered also stinks.

The random combat is much less troublesome with Tech Skill- each improved level of skill lets you do more and more. First lets you scavenge replacement armor(for what got blown off), with higher levels you can replace lost ammunition and some damaged components(making combat much less expensive).

- Make friends with someone who has one.- If you have a high enough tech skill(which lets you repair/salvage parts after combat to fix up your mech), and have someone on foot with some piloting skill, you have a chance to repair and take one of the mech's you blew up.- There is an arena in the Starport, where you can try to fight one on one for money(its not worth the money). It is very difficult, but possible to instead of fighting to steal the loaner mech and high-tail it. Of course, this makes the entire Starport town hate you(and no longer let you back inside), which would be very very bad. (One thing I read suggested there was something like a 1/128 chance for a very powerful mech to be loaned to you).

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About Me

Chester Bolingbroke is a professional in his early 40s who really should be doing something more productive with his time. He lives in Maine with his patient wife, Irene, and when he isn't playing CRPGs, he enjoys traveling, crossword puzzles, and jazz.

The Rules

1. I am following a list of CRPGs in chronological order derived from several sources, including Wikipedia, MobyGames, GameFAQs, and contributions from readers. I am going in chronological order on two sections of the list: a) all RPGs in the 1990s, and b) non-PC RPGs that I missed during my first four years of blogging when I played only games released for DOS.

2. To appear on my play list, a game must be a a) single-player RPG released for a personal computer, and b) in a language that uses a Latin alphabet. Console games do not appear on my playlist unless they also had PC releases during their original release schedule (generally within 2 years of the console release). Exceptions made and ambiguity resolved at my discretion.

3. My definition of "RPG" requires the game to have three core criteria: 1) character leveling and development, 2) combats based at least partly on attribute-derived statistics, 3) inventories consisting of something other than just puzzle items. If I reach a game on my playlist and it lacks one of these items, I may mark it as "rejected" and skip it.

4. I can reject independent and shareware RPGs if they are clearly amateur efforts with no innovations or accolades attached to them.

5. I cannot use cheats. I cannot look at FAQs or walkthroughs until I have finished playing.

6. I don't have to win every game, but I must play for at least six hours.